“Every wrong seems possible today, and accepted.  I don’t accept it.”
-Pablo Casals

Most of the time my job is at least moderately fun; good people, the occasional idiot that entertains me, minimal paperwork except when said occasional idiot has managed to create a mess of epic proportions, etc.  But today I’m reminded of the dark side of police work.  A lot of good gets accomplished, but so much more has to be done and people are limited creatures. 

To combat the chronic under-staffing, a bunch of us are being trained to help police dispatchers handle the huge influx of information that would come in an a major emergency, as well as threats to the campus.  We had to listen to dispatch records from school shootings to see how such things were dealt with from a dispatch viewpoint.  That was bad.  Then we had to listen to a phone call from a girl from our campus who committed suicide. 

The dispatcher who worked with her was amazing, he kept her talking for almost an hour I think while the police tracked her down.  But in the end, she went through with it.  We heard the whole thing.  EMS rushed her to the hospital where she died, her parents had to tell the doctors to remove her from life support because she was brain dead.

Like I said, most of the time my job is good.  Today, my heart hurts.